Tom Colicchio Quotes

In an ideal world for me, school lunch would be free for everybody.

I can't deliver lines, but I can talk about food all night long.

I know how to make sausage, and now that I've seen how laws are made, I'll stick with sausage.

You have to know the classics if you want to cook modern food.

Once you have your basics down, you can start breaking the rules.

Men with shaved heads are always better. Just ask my wife.

In New York, I'll walk down the street and someone will say, 'Nice show,' and that's it. If I'm at a food festival, it's open season.

I'd like to see 'Top Chef: Amateur'. Sometimes we have an amateur chef on the show and they just can't cut it against the pros but there are some great stories there.

I know from personal experience, if a chef yelled at me in a kitchen, the first thing I'd want to do is hit them with a pot.

I travel around and hear from so many kids. Their parents say they were always very picky but they watch the show and they want to try stuff. The show is entertainment, but I think it has done so much for the public perception of what food can be.

Mushrooms can be very fancy. It's the closest you can get to eating dirt.

I dont know too many parents that want to feed their kids soda, but high-fructose corn syrup is cheap. The price of soda in 20 years has gone down 40 percent while the price of whole foods, fruits and vegetables, has gone up 40 percent and obesity goes up right along that curve.

I hate okra and grated mountain yam for the same reason. They're both slimy.

Too often, chefs just want to experiment - they want to use liquid nitrogen before they know how to use heat.

I don't really like money - I like the things you can buy with money.

A couple of months ago, I was down in Florida for the Food and Wine Festival. And this journalist grabbed me and said, 'How does it feel to be a TV guy? You're no longer in the restaurant business.' And I laughed. I asked him, 'How long do you think it takes me to do a season?' He said, 'Well, 200 days.' And I was like, '200 days? Try 20!'

With conglomerates selling companies to liquidators, who close down plants and move to non-union areas, it's about time progressive union leaders step in to stop such job-losing tactics... ESOP should become a part of future bargaining packages!

I can't deal with a lot of spice but I have to eat it. I pay the price - I'm on medication for heartburn, so that's how I deal with it.

One of the first jobs I ever had was opening clams in a seafood restaurant, so I'm pretty quick at it.

I think the most effective way to run a kitchen is to teach, not to just yell.

A lot of professions happen to be male-dominated because women drop out at a certain point. It's unfortunate.

Many of them have accomplished a lot before they ever get to 'Top Chef' although they're not well known. The show just provides them with a platform. There's just one winner and on some seasons you can get numerous chefs that are really good. Even if they don't win, they're all talented.

As a chef, I had started working with groups like Share Our Strength and various local food banks in New York, raising money for hunger-related issues. And not only me, but the entire restaurant industry has been very focused on this issue.

People are not hungry because we dont produce enough. People are hungry for political reasons.

I know nothing about hip-hop... There's only so many times you can grab your crotch and prance around stage. I'm gonna get slammed now for this.

Hunger is a political issue, and there are several things politically that are keeping people hungry - not funding food stamps adequately, not funding school lunches adequately. So there is a political solution to the problem of hunger.

I get angry when I think that people are blatantly incorrect on matters of fact.

I think steak is the ultimate comfort food, and if you're going out for one, that isn't the time to scrimp on calories or quality.

I call all chefs cooks. They're all cooks. That's what we do, we cook. You're a chef when you're running a kitchen.

Every season we try to do something new. And not for gimmicks. We feel the show has to evolve and keep changing.

Recipes tell you nothing. Learning techniques is the key.

It's my belief that cooking is a craft. I think that you can push it into the realm of art, but it starts with craft. It starts with an understanding of materials. It starts with an understanding of where foods are grown.

We're adults. We're the ones who should teach the kids what's good to eat. I don't think the government should ever regulate what we eat at home, but we're feeding them in school with tax dollars. Quite frankly, if my tax dollars are being spent to feed kids, I'd rather feed them better food.

I have very good knife skills. I learned to butcher on my second job - I was 18 years old. Every other day we would break down six legs of veal.

I think the patterns are set very early when the kids are young. But at the same time, there are some flavors kids just don't like.

Most cooks try to learn by making dishes. Doesnt mean you can cook. It means you can make that dish. When you can cook is when you can go to a farmers market, buy a bunch of stuff, then go home and make something without looking at a recipe. Now youre cooking.

When I was 26, 27 years old I was running a kitchen in New York, and I was a raving lunatic. The older you get, you figure out you don't need to do that. You realize at a certain point, there's a certain gravity to what you say and what you do. If that's not enough, all the yelling in the world is not going to matter.

'Chef' doesn't mean that you're the best cook, it simply means 'boss.'

Every chef should have an understanding of pastries or desserts.

This is what people don't understand: obesity is a symptom of poverty. It's not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It's because kids - and this is the problem with school lunch right now - are getting sugar, fat, empty calories - lots of calories - but no nutrition.

A steak needs fat to taste great.

Asian food is very easy to like because it hits your mouth very differently than European food does. In European food, there may be two things to hit - maybe sweet and salty, maybe salty-savory, … but Asian kind of works around, plus you have that distinct flavor that’s usually working in Asian food.

Im not a fan of grilling meat, since that tends to dry it out, and I find grill marks leave a bitter taste. A good steak house will offer different options for preparation, and I would ask them to broil or pan-roast the steak and finish it with butter. It ends up a dark chocolate color and stays very juicy.